Re: Would it save time for translators to fold similar lines?

[Djihed Afifi <djihedlists googlemail com>]

Thomas,


A good idea and a pet peeve of mine. I hope that you don't mind if I add
a few issyes::

A) multiple strings with very few changes: typically different case of
the first letter, or a full stop "." at the end of one of them.

B) Duplications: phonetic alphabet, GPL notice, etc

C) Markup: developers should handle it internally if it's not a problem
for any language. stuff like <i>my string</i> should be just "my
string".

D) Localised integers: for some languages, locales determine the way
numbers or writtern. There are two sets, Arabic and Hindu. It is
possible to make them localisable if:

1) every integer (%d) that is displayed in a UI should be offered for
translations. So translators like us can do (%Id). This is important for
consistency.
2) Make gettext handle langauges and systems (like Solaris) that don't
understand (%Id) gracefully. See [1] for example.

Now before expanding on these points, allow me to quote your
suggestions: 


في ح، 02-12-2007 عند 15:11 -0500 ، كتب Thomas Thurman:

> So:
> 
> 1) It would have saved trouble had the system been designed like this
> originally, wouldn't it?

You mean gettext? that would be good. But isn't it difficult for it to
know which strings are static? (like your example above). Should it go
by the quotes?

> 
> 2) If so, should we change existing lines so that they work this way,
> given that they will both cause existing translations to vanish but
> also reduce the msgid count in translation files?
> 

Oh please yes :-)

> 3) If so, should we have some kind of GNOME Goal to identify and
> eliminate such lines?
> 

Oh yeah again.

Now comes an expansion on these points and mine. Point A is a variation
of your point. 

Point C and D need clear GNOME policies. I'm not sure how I can suggest
that or if I have the community momentum to suggest them. So any input
is welcome :)

For point B, I have been thinking of a way to try to help translators
with consistency. Currently we have a few important packages (Like gtk
+-*) with strings that happen over and over in packages. We also have
the gnome glossary which is not used and is there just to aid translator
tools.

These two still don't address the problem of maintaining consistency in
a large number of applications. Wouldn't it be nice to have a dedicated
gnome l10n package that serves to assemble the terms that occur all over
gnome packages?

We can easily also use some stat building scripts to get the strings
that occur over and over.

Djihed



> T
> _______________________________________________
> gnome-i18n mailing list
> gnome-i18n gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n
-- 
Have a project you would like to be translated to Arabic?
Let us know:
http://wiki.arabeyes.org/Translation_requests

Blog: http://djihed.com